


You'll Come Back

by TheAutumnLeaves



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Redemption, Toddler Luke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22548211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAutumnLeaves/pseuds/TheAutumnLeaves
Summary: Much to Vader's distress, he finds himself marooned on Tatooine, with the Lars homestead the only dwelling he can reach. As he attempts to build himself a distress beacon, he is repeatedly approached by an insistent young boy, who, for reasons beyond Vader's understanding, wants nothing more than to be near him.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker, Owen Lars & Luke Skywalker & Beru Whitesun, Owen Lars/Beru Whitesun
Comments: 17
Kudos: 333





	You'll Come Back

“Kriff,” Vader muttered, staring down at the farm the Force had led him to. He did not want to return to it, he had sworn to himself that he never would. He was half tempted to turn his back on it, and wander farther into the desert, but there was nothing to be gained by that. This was the only dwelling for hundreds of kilometres, and if he wanted to get off of Tatooine, he would be wise to take this opportunity.

Making half an effort at hunching his shoulders, aborted when his burned shoulder blades scraped on the interior of his armour, he trudged down towards the farm where he had buried his mother.

As he approached, a young woman looked up from the doorway, where she was pouring some sullied water into a filter to purify as it flowed back to its tank.

He refused to let himself recognize her face, to think that she had lived with his mother, years ago.

“Civilian,” he boomed, feeling too late that the word was overly formal, and sounded ridiculous, even from himself. “I have need of an off-world transmitter.”

She stammered for a moment, before getting a hold of herself. “I’m afraid we don’t have one, my Lord.”

Vader bristled. “Then I require access to your tools and components.”

He’d been in her garage less than a decade ago, and it had been well stocked then. Surely they could not have lost all of it so quickly?

She hesitated.

Then, “Of course, Lord Vader.”

She bowed, and his stomach churned. She had been a friend, then. Someone who had made Padmé the food that she had brought him in the garage, someone whose maintenance droids he had worked on to calm himself. Now, he was a galaxy apart from her. She was a lowly farmer, who had married the boy who was his step-brother, and he was a Sith Lord, alone, and revelling in his isolation, his inhumanity.

She gathered her pot, and led him down the steps, which instilled in him a great sense of déjà vu, a flickering memory of the thought that his mother would be around the next corner.

In the courtyard, a young boy with sandy blonde hair sat, legs spread, and toys littered around him.

Their lives had gone on. Without him, without his mother, without Padmé, these people had continued their lives.

The boy looked up curiously at the sound of his breathing, then bounced to his feet, running up to them and grabbing the girl’s tunic, “Who’s he?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” she answered lightly, tapping his nose, and extricating herself from his grasp. “He will just be using our garage.”

The boy looked over at him, and he saw a spark of intelligence, of life, in his eyes. Last time he had been here, he would have been curious about the child, his relative by marriage. Three years later, he would have killed the boy with only fleeting pity. Now, he looked on the boy, numb. He was just a boy. He was not special, regardless of the life in his young face. He was not a threat, in spite of his health. He was nothing, to Vader, and so Vader looked away from him again.

“You will be reimbursed for any parts that I require.”

“Th-thank you, my Lord,” she said.

He looked back at her one final time, before sweeping off to the garage.

It was not long before he was aware that he was not alone.

“Show yourself,” he hissed.

Uncertainly, the small boy stepped out from behind the battered old speeder that sat where Padmé had stood once, at once too long, and not long enough, ago.

“You’re not from here.”

Wide eyes met Vader’s hidden ones, little hands twisted in front of the child’s pudgy belly.

“Go back to your mother,” Vader commanded, returning his attention to his work, even as it was torn sharply in another direction.

His own mother must have used this tool bench.

“She’s my auntie,” the boy said, heaving himself up onto the bench, where Vader had rested one knee as he worked.

“I do not care,” Vader insisted, pushing at the boy with his knee. “Return to her.”

“I live here,” the boy said indignantly, wrapping himself around Vader’s folded leg. “This is _my_ workbench. And that’s mine.”

He reached out to grab a spanner Vader had just lifted, somehow managing to do so without loosening his grasp on the Sith.

Vader gave up on being even remotely gentle with the little body, and sharply straightened his leg, the boy giving a gasp of surprise, and falling to the floor.

“I do not care if you believe that you own these petty tools,” he snapped. “I will be gone soon, and they will be returned to you, and you would do well _not to bother me._ ”

He expected a wail from the child. Anticipated reacting poorly, snuffing out another life that he could not bring himself to care about. The boy was small, was stupid and helpless in his youth, was expressing what little individuality he had in the galaxy, and it would get him killed here, one way or another.

Instead, the boy said, in a voice filled with filtered pain, “You _hurt_ me.”

“And you should be glad I have done nothing worse. Go.”

“I’m not getting up. I hurt.”

Vader turned to the boy, seething. Irritation blended into fury so smoothly, he would raise a hand against the child.

The boy was sitting on the sandy floor, one hand over a large scrape, which was oozing blood through a tear in his pant leg. His teeth were set over his lip, and as Vader watched, the boy took an unsteady breath.

“Go find your aunt,” Vader said again.

The boy shook his head, and suddenly pulled his free arm up to cover his face as he let out a little whimper, an uneven attempt to calm his breathing.

“Sitting there will not help you,” Vader insisted, suffering himself to place the hydrospanner back on the work bench, and going over to the child, lifting him up, and setting him firmly on his feet, not allowing him to shy back from placing his weight on the hurt leg. “Go find your aunt, and she will treat you.”

The boy didn’t answer, still whimpering into his sleeve, but once Vader had released him, he stumbled off out of the garage, and Vader returned to his work.

“I brought you a juice.”

Vader looked up from his work, glaring blankly at the wall beyond the workbench as he sensed the child walking up behind him.

“I do not wish to harm you, _boy_.”

“I brought juice!” the boy insisted again, and Vader stiffened as he felt the miniscule pull of the child’s fist in his cape.

“I cannot drink juice. Go back to your aunt.”

“Can I stay with you?” the boy asked, and Vader saw in his minimal peripheral vision that the boy had placed a juice box on the bench.

“Why. Would you wish to do a foolish thing like that.”

“Dunno,” the child said, and Vader grit his teeth as the youngling climbed back up onto the bench. His ruined pant leg had been cut away mid-thigh, and the scrapes from earlier had been bound with fresh cloth.

“You will be silent,” he informed the boy sternly.

The child shrugged, stabbing his juice box and beginning to drink, gazing intently at Vader.

As he worked, the boy slowly flicked his toes back and forth, finishing his juice box before gathering up several discarded transmitter pieces, and trying to push them together.

Vader sighed, pulling them away, and quickly piecing them together, before handing them back to the boy. “You would damage them.”

“How’d you fix it?” the boy asked curiously, crawling across the tabletop towards Vader, and leaning against his arm, watching as he returned to his work. He seemed to have taken Vader’s words as permission for him to talk.

“With the benefit of years of practice, which you do not have,” Vader informed him firmly, lifting the boy, and placing him a couple of feet away from himself.

“I wanna help!” the boy announced determinedly.

“You would be of no help,” Vader snapped. “I am not your minder. Go.”

“I wanna stay with you,” the boy answered happily, before proffering a hand. “I’m Luke, by the way.”

There was something terribly familiar in his manner, the confident friendliness with which he offered his delicate fingers. Something that reminded Vader all too much of himself, when he had lived on Tatooine, and echoed his mother’s grown-up words to strangers.

“Vader,” he answered shortly.

The boy seemed soothed at least by his answers, and sat quietly on the bench, watching interestedly. Outside, Vader was distantly aware of a storm beginning to brew, the mechanisms returning fluidly to function under his fingers, as they always had. Even the boy made this somehow comfortable, as he fidgeted quietly, before laying his head on his shoulder and watching sleepily.

When his brother-in-law burst in, desperate to find Luke, afraid that he had wandered off into the storm, Vader looked up in surprise.

Luke had dozed off on the bench altogether, and he had clumsily propped him up with the toolbox, not wanting him to be roused and ask more questions. He gestured to the boy, and Owen scooped the child into his arms, turning to head deeper into the compound for safety, as the boy startled awake with a gasp.

“Ben!”

“Huh?” the farmer grunted, looking down at the child in his arms.

“Ben’s out there!” Luke squeaked, and Vader watched with an unfamiliar hint of humour as the boy scrabbled at his guardian’s grasp, trying to squirm to the floor.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Owen growled, capturing Luke and folding him tightly to his chest, as the child continued to try to squirm to freedom. “You are not running out into a sandstorm.”

“But Ben’s out there!” the boy screamed again, and Vader had to look away to keep himself from laughing as the boy sank his teeth into his uncle’s arm.

“KRIFF.”

Vader heard Luke hit the floor, and before Owen could grab him again, the boy took off running, and it was clear that his little legs had led them both to underestimate his speed.

Without a moment’s thought, Vader abandoned the half-completed transmitter, running after the child, into the swirling storm.

Even by the time he reached the door, the youngling had disappeared. As he had worked, the sky had darkened, the suns setting, and sand blotting out the moons.

Without thinking, he reached out in the Force, trying to sense the direction the child had gone, and he was nearly overcome with a terribly familiar feeling.

Obi-Wan.

The man who had nearly killed him, who had seen his galaxy fall down around his ears and turned against him anyway.

But, the presence of the child was there, too.

And his presence had its own tinge of familiarity.

Though it had experienced more growth since he had last felt it.

After all, Obi-Wan had been a grown man when he and Anakin had parted ways. And the little boy, the child who had run out into the storm to find him…

He had been less than an infant.

The realization at once filled him with joy, and paralyzed him in utter terror.

His son was alive, but his son had run out into a sandstorm, which could escalate at any moment, and wipe his brief existence from the galaxy.

His determination redoubled, he ran after the presence he had felt last, still forming in Padmé’s womb.

The storm was still building, and he was nearly upon the two before he could see them through the sand.

His teacher, huddled over the form of his son.

“Luke!” he demanded, reaching out to pull the boy from Kenobi’s arms.

He would not see his son die in this storm, nor would he leave him on this Force-forsaken planet.

At the movement, Luke shrieked, his face rubbed raw in the mere moments that Vader had it pulled away from Obi-Wan’s chest.

Instinctively, he released the boy, and watched as Obi-Wan squinted up at him, his own face weathered and bleeding, grey beginning to replace the familiar red of his hair.

Vader decided to separate Luke from his human sand shield once they were safely out of the wind, and grabbed Kenobi by the scruff of his neck, hauling him through the sand towards the homestead.

The moment that they were safely inside the entrance dome, he pulled Luke away from Kenobi, withdrawing a canister of aerosol bacta from his belt, and carefully spraying it over his scratched face.

“Luke,” he said again, revelling in the name, in the little boy.

Luke, however, was reaching for Obi-Wan again, coughing on sand, tears leaking from his squeezed-shut eyes.

“It’s alright, Luke,” Kenobi assured him, stroking his hair gently, disregarding his own abrasions. “I’m here.”

Luke grasped Kenobi’s robes, and for a moment, Vader felt fury flare again, even now that he knew that he was looking upon his own child.

But then, a little hand reached for him as well, and he felt the rage subside, just as Owen appeared at the foot of the stairs, closely followed by Beru.

“Luke! You’re going to get yourself killed!”

At the words, Luke looked up at his guardian, and Vader felt his fear flicker, the little presence swelling with distress, before the boy began to cry, babbling helplessly about Kenobi, and the sandstorm.

“Hush,” Obi-Wan murmured again, drawing Luke safely into his arms, as Vader could do nothing but watch the habitual kindness with which they treated the child. When he had been young, there had been no one but his mother to coddle him when he was hurting, to find himself among a number of adults who wished to be reassuring Luke was… alien, at the very least.

“I’m here, Luke. You don’t have to worry.”

Even years after Kenobi’s reassurances had been meant for him, something in Vader felt soothed by that familiar tone.

“It is not safe here,” he declared, lifting Luke out of Kenobi’s grasp, and leading the way farther underground, savouring the weight of the child in his arms.

Only when all four of them had hunkered down in the kitchen, closing the home’s protective blast door, did he release his son. The boy sat on the counter, wide eyed, blinking around at the adults as the storm battered their refuge.

After a moment of standing in the darkness, the boy raised his hand and pointed at Kenobi.

“He’s gotta have some bacta, too.”

The scratches on the youngling’s face were already faint, looking nearly weeks old, and at the concern with which he regarded Kenobi, Vader barely resisted handing over the bacta canister.

Instead, he returned his attention to his son. To the hundreds of questions he longed to ask. Had he been cared for? Was he happy? Was Padmé somehow _here,_ of all places?

“Do you know who I am?” he asked finally.

“You’re Darth Vader,” Luke answered, looking up at him.

And part of Vader rejoiced that the boy looked at him without fear, while calling him by that name, and part of him trembled that his dear son had approached a warlord so brazenly.

“That is correct,” he admitted, feeling a forgotten sense of conspiratorialism steal over him as he bent uncomfortably to look at the boy from his own level. “But I am something more, as well.”

“Yeah?” Luke asked, tipping his head curiously. “What?”

He felt Obi-Wan’s terror, the fact that he had not used the bacta yet, watching them in paralysis.

“I am your father.”

At his words, the boy’s face lit up, and the tone of the room shifted. Kenobi seemed to let out a breath, Beru and Owen both stepped back, gripping one another tightly, but Luke scrambled to his feet on the counter, reaching out to touch Vader, to lean into his arms.

“Father!!”

Surprised, but so desperately grateful of his son’s acceptance, Vader caught him, sweeping him from the counter, spinning the little boy as he had once swung the child’s mother, his heart seeming to curdle and churn within him as he heard the youngling laugh.

He was a monster, unfit to hold this boy. But Luke did not see that, Luke was glad to be held, and Vader laughed himself, not in triumph, but in sheer surprise and relief. In gratitude.

“You’re going to come with me,” he told Luke, lifting the boy to sit on his shoulder. “Far away from Tatooine, and you will have all the water you want, and more.”

“What about Auntie Beru?” Luke asked worriedly, reaching down towards Vader’s mask with curious, pudgy fingers.

 _What ABOUT her_ , Vader wanted to snap, but for the child’s benefit, he turned towards the woman clutching his stepbrother, and felt a flicker of gentleness take him. She had done nothing wrong, not really. He could sense that she had not even known his own identity, that Obi-Wan was the only one not surprised by it.

He turned to Obi-Wan, who was finally treating his scratched face, and even Obi-Wan did not seem like the monster he wanted to believe it would require to take his son from him.

He had killed children. Younglings the age of the boy he held now. He had killed them with hardly a flicker of guilt, and then he had killed the woman he had claimed to do it for.

It had been wise, then, to take his child away.

To hide him, somewhere Vader would not voluntarily return to.

And he looked up at the little boy happily perched on his shoulder, and felt that he could be reasonably expected to return him, if this heartbeat of good, this moment of clarity was genuine.

To pass his little boy back, to never see those soft locks and bright, innocent smile. To return to the garage, and finish rigging his transmitter, all without his baby.

Was that what it was to be good?

He had tried for so long not to want to, not to care about goodness. To embrace what he had become, because it was all that he deserved. But now, trapped in the gaze of his youngling, he wanted to deserve better, because he _needed_ better. He needed his little angel, that innocent smile to remind him that not all was lost, that there were still those worth fighting for.

He turned to Obi-Wan, feeling that he was the only person who could offer the forgiveness Luke so freely threw his way.

But he had not the words to ask for it. He could not call Obi-Wan ‘Master’, and take his place once more under the heel of another. He had been a slave for too long. To Watto, to the Jedi, to Obi-Wan, and to the Emperor.

He had a son.

He could not be a slave anymore, not when the boy’s mother was not free to care for him.

“I wish… to stay,” he said haltingly.

That was true, was close enough to an apology.

He wished to stay, and hold his son, to protect him from future sandstorms and care for him.

“I could help,” he offered, thinking again of the tool bench, and rationalizing that to become a farmer and join his farmer son was not to re-enter slavery.

“Yes!” Luke shouted excitedly, and Vader found his vision obscured by a little arm as Luke threw himself around his father’s helmet. “Yes, let him stay, please!!”

Cautiously, Vader lifted his youngling’s arm, peeking out past it at Kenobi.

He wanted to throw himself to the floor and beg for his old master’s forgiveness, but as the boy perched on his shoulder kept him from attacking those around him, so he kept him from begging.

He had a son. A son who needed the protection of a father. Protection he had to be free to grant.

“Please,” he echoed, gripping the little boy’s side, feeling his delicate corporeality. “I have to stay. For Luke.”

“For me,” Luke agreed. “He wants me. He came back.”

Vader realized suddenly that his son’s voice was shaking, and as the boy took a desperate gasp for air, he lifted his son down, cradling him in his arms, disregarding the adults around them.

“Of course, I came back,” he appealed to the child. “Of course, I want you.”

Luke took a great, shaking breath, and Vader’s breath was taken away as the youngling leaned into his chest, grasping his tabard tightly.

“Of course, I want you,” he sighed again, slowly stroking the child’s soft hair, feeling that all that mattered in the galaxy sat in his arms. His son, and Padmé’s, but for the moment, most importantly his own. Somehow, incredibly, wanting him to stay.

“Anakin, you swear,” Obi-Wan began, and he could hear the doubt, the accusation in his old master’s voice.

“I swear.”

**Author's Note:**

> Mystery for the ages, when I went to post this, a link to Vienna Teng's Stray Italian Greyhound had somehow got pasted at the beginning of the work.... can't explain that. But it is worth a listen, everyone go listen to a beautiful song about love and finding comfort. (though it fits Luke/Mara better than Luke and Vader)


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